Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update Released

The Dynamics CRM Online 2016 Update arrived on Dec. 1, 2015 bringing new sales, marketing, and customer service capabilities, and further integration with Office 365. The improvements address sales team collaboration, enable delivery of marketing campaigns to mobile devices, increase visibility into service cases to help speed up resolution, and automate service and sales order document creation for field personnel. However, several important features, such as offline mobile application data, were postponed to future releases, and customers should evaluate whether the current release is compelling enough to implement.

Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service

The main components of the CRM Online (sales, marketing, and customer service) received new features to create parity with competitor’s features.

Sales

New sales team incentive capabilities come from the acquisition of Incent Games LLC, the developer of FantasySales Team, a gamification platform. Unlike traditional sales-department-centric incentive programs and contests, FantasySales Team takes a more inclusive approach and allows sales teams to include non-sales employees (such as management, operations, and finance employees) in order to create an environment where more employees are vested in the success of sales activities.